The 12th Annual Halloween Festival London UKby Micca
After a break of several years your London Correspondent has returned.

Saturday: After a year full of incident and trauma for the Organisers, helpers group and individual personnel that help to run the Halloween Festival it finally got going just after noon on Saturday with an opening ceremony, a splendid Craft Fair and a very full programme of talks.

Unfortunately, for RL reasons, I was much later arriving but was very quickly into meeting and greeting many old and new friends and generally enjoying the amazing ambience that this Festival (now in its 12th amazing year) generates in the Hall of the Queen Mary Campus in Mile End in East London UK.

It may be that the Real Ale bar is a contributor to this; it seemed very busy!

As always, what I love and enjoy most about this is the chance to meet friends of “like mind” and share those conversations that, perhaps luckily, only occur at these events.

In the first ˝ hour of just wandering around conversations touched on The resistance of some to predictive tools (tarot in this case) Ogham (the ancient Celtic writing method) The Alphabet of the trees and the fascinating new book on this produced by Karen of Headingham Fair, and it just snowballed on from there.

Of course one of the High Points of the whole weekend was the Rocky Horror Fashion Show! This was truly an amazing spectacle with a purple silk lined caped Frank’n’furter as MC and a sound track of the Music from the film Warnings were given at the beginning that the “show “may not be suitable for “children or those easily shocked or of a nervous disposition” and MY Oh MY were they RIGHT!!!

Suffice to say that 2 females and one male (representing the early Britons) clad only in Woad spirals added a dimension to the Pelvic Thrust part of “Doing the Time Warp” that I will never forget!! (Unfortunately I had NO CAMERA)

Nothing could come even close to matching this for Saturday.

Sunday: I arrived to find that The Owl Sanctuary people had a collection of live Owls and other birds of Prey on the lawn outside the Hall, So after diverting to admire a few splendid specimens including 2 rather nice Scops, a Tawny and Barn Owl and a simply wonderful Great Grey Owl, I then went and did some serious damage to the “plastic” in some shopping.

I always love this event and its Sister the Beltane bash in May as it provides an opportunity to meet up with Pagans from so many different Paths and get drawn into discussion and conversation, sometimes even on Non Pagan Topics! (The star quality of the Real ale was generally agreed on, except for the person lamenting the absence of Mead)

It was permitted (after skilful negotiation with the Local Police conducted over some months) to have an escorted procession after Dark from the Hall to a local Park to conduct an outdoor Closing ceremony.

The procession included The Morrigan (the Giant belonging to the organizers) and several other Nordic Giants including Hel, Loki and others, (from Thorskeggas group) a lot of banners and a crowd of drummers and costumed others totaling a couple of Hundred at least.

This was a completely new innovation and was the perfect way to end the Festival, all the usual elements of a Halloween ceremony were included, shared food and drink, a Cauldron of Regrets, and some spirited (groan!) Circle Dancing!!

All in all another very enjoyable Festival, Many thanks to Jeanette, Caduceus, and The Ravens, The Raven and the Rose, and the other contributors for a splendid Festival

Merry meet, Merry part, and Merry meet again!!!

Micca

Footnotes:
Photo Notes...

The banners outside Queen Mary College University of London

The Halloween Festival Procession behind the banner in Mile End Road London UK

The Morrigán and other Giants set off to process

ABOUT... Micca

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